# wasper vs wasp **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 10, 2011, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wasper-vs-wasp/570898 "2011-02-10T15:31:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Brynda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e79b87/32.png) [@Brynda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brynda)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wasper-vs-wasp/570898/1 "2011-02-10T15:31:17Z")
My boyfriend, who is from a rural area of Tennessee, grew up hearing wasps called “waspers.” Despite having grown up in Tennessee myself, I have never heard of this. What say you, dopers? If you have heard it, I would be interested in knowing where. Poll to follow. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wasper-vs-wasp/570898/2 "2011-02-10T15:40:53Z")
Nope, never heard it. Schoolboys call them ‘Jaspers’ here in the UK, at least they did where and when I went to school. ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wasper-vs-wasp/570898/3 "2011-02-10T15:49:44Z")
Wasps are wasps. Hornets are hornets. Dirt daubers are daubers. ---
**Author:** ![Paintcharge](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/paintcharge/32/7946_2.png) [@Paintcharge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paintcharge)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wasper-vs-wasp/570898/4 "2011-02-10T16:11:31Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#): > > Wasps are wasps. > > Hornets are hornets. > > Dirt daubers are daubers. Yup, and Yellow Jacket are [del]little bastards[/del] Yellow Jackets. I stepped in a hidden ground nest when I was a kid. 45-50 stings up my legs. About a month later one got down the back of my shirt and I then sat back in the car and he stung me 3-4 times. ---
**Author:** ![Wheelz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wheelz/32/5718_2.png) [@Wheelz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wheelz)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wasper-vs-wasp/570898/5 "2011-02-10T16:22:06Z")
I assume you’re talking about wasps, the stinging insects, not WASPs, the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Either way, though, nope, never heard ‘waspers.’ ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wasper-vs-wasp/570898/6 "2011-02-10T16:38:25Z")
Never heard of ‘wasper’ either, though it occurs to me that it might be a holdover of the [Oxford -er](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_%22-er%22), that nineteenth-century slang formation that gave us “soccer” for “Association football”. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wasper-vs-wasp/570898/7 "2011-02-10T16:56:53Z")
I never heard of the “Oxford-er” before, but reading **Sunspace** ’s link, my eye was caught by this: > [@](#): > > **The role of Harry** > > Oxford “-er” coinages may be embellished by preceding the slang formulation with the word “Harry”.[citation needed] Thus an apology to Atkins for non-provision of champagne might take the form: > > “No champers tonight, Atters. I’m Harry Skinters (= low on funds)”. > > On Bargain Hunt Tim Wonnacott has frequently referred to items of fairly recent manufacture as Harry Spankers (i.e. “spanking new”). So “Harry Potter” has the form of an _Embellished Oxford “er”_ ---
**Author:** ![Gil-Martin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Gil-Martin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gil-Martin)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wasper-vs-wasp/570898/8 "2011-02-10T18:14:16Z")
I grew up in northern Illinois, where we had wasps. As an adult, I’ve encountered quite a few waspers in northern Arkansas, and perhaps in some other places in the South as well. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wasper-vs-wasp/570898/9 "2011-02-10T23:18:30Z")
> [@Wheelz](#): > > I assume you’re talking about wasps, the stinging insects, not WASPs, the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. > > Either way, though, nope, never heard ‘waspers.’ I was confused too, until like you I realized that neither are ever called waspers so it doesn’t matter which the OP means. ---
**Author:** ![Trubie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/71c47a/32.png) [@Trubie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trubie)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wasper-vs-wasp/570898/10 "2011-02-11T00:45:53Z")
If you’re talking about the term for people, I notice mostly uneducated people tend to use a term other than WASP. ---
**Author:** ![Brynda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e79b87/32.png) [@Brynda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brynda)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wasper-vs-wasp/570898/11 "2011-02-11T04:36:27Z")
Bugs (wasps) not people (WASPs). Spoken they are confusing, but the caps give the acronym away. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2011, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wasper-vs-wasp/570898/12 "2011-02-12T14:15:20Z")
I’ve heard it from the very, very backwoodsy people, usually a couple generations removed from my own. And, even then, I always got the idea that they knew they were adding something to the word, as it was only used with a negative connotation. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2011, 9:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wasper-vs-wasp/570898/13 "2011-02-14T09:47:26Z")
Aay chance there’s areas with high non-English influence? Wasper sounds awful close to Italian “vespa”, for example ---
**Author:** ![Davanita](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ea5d25/32.png) [@Davanita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Davanita)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2016, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wasper-vs-wasp/570898/14 "2016-09-11T17:22:26Z")
I am a young woman from backwoods Tennessee myself. The term wasper is commonly used in this area of the country. The backwoods Tennessee (and surrounding areas) dialect is more closely related to elizabethton(may be spelt incorrectly) English than any other dialect spoken in the United States today. My best educated guess is that it is a carry over from that era or a simple bastardization that came late. ---
**Author:** ![Davanita](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ea5d25/32.png) [@Davanita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Davanita)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2016, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wasper-vs-wasp/570898/15 "2016-09-11T17:42:10Z")
I have already returned with more studies. ‘Wasper’ could easily be a term used as a term for a person who kills them. It would just make sense to call someone a “wasper” if they eradicated them from areas as an occupation. I present another theory. Tennessee not only had a high English immigration rate, it was home to many Germans also. The German word for wasp is wespe, and the settlers are known to bastardize German words (e.g Pennsylvania Dutch is not Dutch, but said they were from Deutschland) It is imaginable that ‘wespe’ could have been bastardized and pronounced as wasper. It easily could have stayed in the southern vernacular. ---
**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2016, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wasper-vs-wasp/570898/16 "2016-09-11T22:22:09Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Aay chance there’s areas with high non-English influence? Wasper sounds awful close to Italian “vespa”, for example I wondered that myself, and I wondered if the evening church service Vespers would sound waspy to some folks. ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2016, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wasper-vs-wasp/570898/17 "2016-09-11T23:01:39Z")
Wait, are we talking about Episcopalians or Yellow Jackets? But no, I’ve never heard of “Waspers.” ---
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2016, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wasper-vs-wasp/570898/18 "2016-09-12T00:29:04Z")
Maybe an old thread but both the term and it were new to me. ---
**Author:** ![Count\_Blucher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Count\_Blucher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Count_Blucher)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2016, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wasper-vs-wasp/570898/19 "2016-09-12T00:29:44Z")
> [@TruCelt](#): > > Wait, are we talking about Episcopalians or Yellow Jackets? Yellow Jackets, of course. Episcopalians can get their own cans of soda. ---
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2016, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wasper-vs-wasp/570898/20 "2016-09-12T00:49:12Z")
> [@Count\_Blucher](#): > > Yellow Jackets, of course. > > Episcopalians can get their own cans of soda. Ours are more a coffee and cigarette crowd. And the Espicopalians as well. 🙂 [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wasper-vs-wasp/570898.md?page=2)